Most everyone desires a good night's rest. Choosing the right mattress is essential to ensuring a restful sleep. However, choosing the correct mattress is one of the most confusing decisions a consumer has to make. There is very little technical information about the mattresses provided by the retailer or manufacturer so making a comparison of different mattresses is difficult.
Additionally, consumers generally have a challenging time verbalizing to the retail salesperson what they want in a mattress. This inability to verbalize the characteristics of a mattress creates a disconnect between a consumer and a salesperson in the typical retail environment. Often in the retail environment when a consumer walks into a store and asks to see a mattress, the salesperson likely posits the question, “What kind of a mattress are you looking for?” The customer usually then replies, “Firm,” “Supportive,” “Pillowtop,” or “The one that's on sale.” This exchange is unproductive. None of the consumer's answers help the salesperson understand how to match a mattress with the consumer's specific needs. Many times a consumer will think they want a “firm mattress.” However, after sampling several “firm mattresses” offered by the salesperson and objecting to them because they “feel too hard,” consumers eventually come to the realization that what they really need is a medium or plush mattress. Unfortunately, this process of repeatedly sampling mattresses offered by the salesperson tends to frustrate the consumer. More often than not, frustrated with the sales experience, the consumer will leave the store and the purchase of a mattress to another day—less often will the consumer doggedly persist through the sampling process to finally arrive at a mattress that fits his or her needs.
Ultimately, the consumer is looking for a better night's sleep and wants to purchase a quality mattress to improve their chances of achieving this. Further complicating the mattress selection process is the fact that there are two main variables affecting a consumer's purchasing decision, comfort and support. In order to find a quality mattress that meets the consumer's needs, it must have the right combination of both comfort and support. However, whether a quality mattress has the right combination of comfort and support for particular consumer is a very subjective individualized assessment. Currently, this assessment is made through the verbal exchange of the salesperson and consumer, as explained above. And as explained above, defining comfort or support verbally is not an easy task, and one which can easily frustrate the sales process and result in the consumer either leaving the store or choosing a mattress that is not a good fit for him or her. In the latter case, the store must then deal with returns, unhappy customers and/or lost profits.
Compounding the problem is that most consumers test a prospective new mattress while lying on their backs. Most consumers and salespersons ignore that approximately 65% of consumers actually sleep on their side. A mattress that feels good when one is lying on his or her back does not necessarily feel good when one is lying on his or her side. When lying on one's side, one will generate additional surface pressure as his or her weight is dispersed over a smaller area. In addition, when lying on one's side, the profile of the body is more generally pronounced. In other words, in the side lying position, the vertical height difference between the shoulder and the waist is generally greater than the vertical height difference between the lumbar and buttocks in the back lying (supine) position. This difference in weight distribution results in different pressure points for a side sleeper and a back sleeper. Thus, depending upon whether the consumer is predominantly a side sleeper or a back sleeper, the support structure of the mattress may need to be substantially different. Because of differences in a consumer's body profile and pressure points in the predominant sleep position, it is important for a consumer to define comfort and support in terms of his or her predominant sleep position.
What is needed is a better way to quickly and effectively select a mattress that will best match the consumer's definition of comfort and support.